


The Country House and What may be Found There

by bookhobbit



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Ghosts (TV 2019)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 16:12:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19479448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/pseuds/bookhobbit
Summary: The house that John Segundus inherits from his distant cousin Mrs Lennox is a little bit more crowded than he had anticipated.





	The Country House and What may be Found There

**Author's Note:**

> This is my partner's AU; I'm just writing it. There may or may not be more of it according to what I feel. Stephen, the Gentleman, Lascelles, and Drawlight all have places in this AU, but they have not arisen yet!

2019.

John Segundus really hates flat-hunting.

"It's great, right?" says the estate agent, pushing open a door and displaying the inside. The walls are stained with something that's probably nicotine and the tiny window looks jammed halfway. "Very cozy."

"Yeah," manages Segundus, smiling weakly. "Great."

Mr. Honeyfoot clears his throat and says in a diplomatic tone, "I think maybe he'll have to think about it."

Segundus shoots him a grateful look and nods. For the fifth time, he thanks his lucky stars that Honeyfoot is accompanying him on this mission, so that no-one can stonewall him into renting a flat he doesn't like. 

They troop out, Segundus feeling dispirited. That was the last one, and none of them has been either livable or within his price range. How is someone living on a teacher's salary with no car meant to get a flat around here, anyway? 

His phone rings.

-

1940.

Something is wrong with Arabella's head, there's a sharp pain in the side of it. Bomb. Yes, that was it. She'd been in York on duty and they'd been bombed....

The ambulance must be taking her to Ashfair. She's glad. Arabella has been managing Ashfair since it became a hospital. She likes it there; she feels loved.

That sense of love envelopes her as they carry her in and put her down, triage she thinks, working out how bad it is...there are some soldiers around her. She hopes someone's looking after them too.

Everything feels so dark, and she's so tired. She closes her eyes.

"Not now, doll, not now," says the medic, Griffidd she thinks. "You've got to keep awake. Can't be running this place without you, now, can we?"

But Arabella can't, no matter how hard she tries.

She fancies she can feel someone holding her hand, as she closes her eyes. Someone whispering in her ear,  _ it'll be all right _ .

When she opens her eyes, there's a handsome man crouched in front of her, his face suffused with softness, gently clutching her hand.

"Who are you?" she says, blinking awake.

"My name is Jonathan Strange." He lets her hand go carefully, and smiles. "I apologise if I've taken liberties, only...it is a stressful time and I didn't want you to feel alone."

"A stressful time?" says Arabella. "What is?"

"Dying," says Jonathan Strange apologetically. 

Arabella looks at her own hands, which seem solid enough, and then tries to press them into the bed. They pass through.

"Oh," she says.

She looks around. The medic is shaking his head and frowning, and as she watches he steps away and says something to the nurse. She can't hear very well now.

"I did hear the house was haunted," she says. "The soldiers always said so."

"Soldiers," says Jonathan Strange with a smile, "are very prone to near-death experiences. I should know; I was one once." His smile has a faint irony about it; at first she thinks he's making fun of her, then she decides that's just how he is.

"It's hard to imagine you as a soldier somehow," she says.

"I'm not sure, Miss Woodhope, if that is a compliment or an insult. May I show you around the house?"

"How do you know my name?" 

Strange looks a little guilty. "We've seen you. Before. Your valient work for your country is appreciated."

"Ha," says a voice from behind them. Arabella jumps, and Strange spins round.

"Mr Norrell! I am engaged in showing our newest resident the Ashfair, thank you!"

"Hurtfew, not Ashfair. Is that what you call it," says apparently-Mr-Norrell a little darkly. "I should think wooing her would be more accurate. Why, only this afternoon, you expressed excitement that she was dying--"

"No!" says Strange. "No, I didn't mean it that way!" He spins again to Arabella. "It's just, you see--"

"He's pined," says Mr Norrell. He makes bitter face and she wonders if he's always like this. "Pined most disgracefully."

"Now, listen, Mr Norrell--"

"Ha!" A tall woman, dark-haired and strikingly beautiful, strides into the room, walking straight through a doctor. "Finally!"

"Miss Wintertowne, I would thank you to --"

"Another woman!" says Miss Wintertowne, taking Arabella's hand in both her own. "Too long I have been alone among these--" she glances around and makes a face--" _ Men _ ."

"There are more than two?" says Arabella, looking around.

"Two others aside from Mr Strange and Mr Norrell." Emma releases one hand to make a sweeping gesture. "But at last I shall no longer be--"

"I was showing Miss Woodhope around the house!"

"You can call me Arabella," puts in Arabella. "Both of you. Perhaps Mr Strange--"

"Jonathan," says Strange, beaming. To be honest, the expression looks a  _ little  _ evil.

"Perhaps Jonathan can show me around the house, and Miss Wintertowne--"

"Emma."

"Emma can tell me more about the history here?"

"I accept the truce," says Emma.

Jonathan sticks his arm out and Arabella takes it.

If she has to be dead, maybe she won't be in such bad company.

-

1907.

"I'm sure you'll be comfortable here," says old Mrs. Erquistone, patting the covers of Emma's bed. "I hardly ever manage to come down from Edinburgh, you know. You shall have the run of the house."

"I shouldn't like to be trouble," says Emma. She coughs discreetly into her handkerchief.

"It won't be any trouble." Mrs Erquistone winks. "Besides, suffragists must stick together, must we not?"

Mrs. Wintertowne smiles at her. "Say thank you, Emma dear."

"Thank you," says Emma, exhausted by the effort.

"It will be thanks enough if you can get yourself well enough to marry your Sir Walter. I do feel he will be a valuable ally if you snare him. I shall be off; write to me, won't you, if you need anything?"

Emma smiles a tired smile and lets her hand fall back down onto the bed.

She can tell the house is unloved. It has the faintly musty smell that old houses always do get when they're shut up ten months of the year. But it's quiet, and that's all she really needs.

She must get well; she wills herself to get well.

If only she wasn't so very tired.

Emma Wintertowne dies quietly, with little fuss, three months after she arrived.

When she opens her eyes again, there are a lot of  _ men  _ standing over her.

"What are you doing here?" she demands, wrenching herself upright. "Who are you?"

The littlest one, the one in the nightcap and spectacles, clears his throat. "Miss, my name is Gilbert Norrell, and this is my house--"

"I bought it!" objects the tall one with the curly hair. 

"You're not a Norrell. It doesn't count."

" _ He's _ not a Norrell either," says the tall one, gesturing at a dark-haired disreputable-looking man.

"Yes, but  _ he  _ acquired the house lawfully."

"He murdered you for it!"

"I keep telling you, no he didn't!"

The disreputable man rolls his eyes and steps forward, bows a little sarcastically. "Miss Wintertowne, this is Hurfew, and we are the ghosts."

"And so are you," says the little one peevishly.

"I thought it was called Ashfair," says Emma, trying very hard to follow this extremely chaotic trickle of information.

"It is!" says the curly-haired one in triumph. 

"It was Hurtfew first," says the disreputable one to Emma, ignoring the curly-haired one. "Ashfair came later. With him." He nods at the curly-haired one.

"And it's haunted," says Emma.

"Yes."

"By  _ men _ ," says Emma in disbelief.

"I'm afraid so," says the disreputable one solemnly. "Men and now you."

Emma stares around herself at the disreputable one, the little one, the curly-haired one, and the fourth she hadn't noticed, a man with strange blue tattoos all over his body. Perfectly visible ones, since he's only half-dressed. He's doing some kind of dance.

She gives a sincere and heartfelt groan.

-

1822.

Jonathan Strange had thought occult happenings would be a lot more exciting when he had bought this house. It had been very cheap because no-one had really owned it properly, and everyone said it was haunted by the ghosts of not one but two magicians, and that murder had been involved, and Strange had ambitions to become a magician. And the library, at least, was all that had been promised, moldy though some books were.

This is what occult happenings look like: Gilbert Norrell hovering over his shoulder in the library, critiquing his choice of reading material.

"You have my entire library at your beck and call and you choose Belasis!" says Norrell, prodding an angry transparent finger at the book.

"Belasis is exciting, unlike all the dull fellows you favor. He has many insights. Look at this," says Jonathan Strange, flourishing the book. "Look. A spell for summoning a fairy."

"Don't be foolish. That method is flawed in several crucial ways. In fact--" Norrell squints at it suspiciously -- "I believe it may be rather dangerous."

"You simply don't trust that I am in fact a decent magician," says Strange. "I'll show you. You will see."

"I don't think you'll want to watch this, sir," says Childermass to Norrell. 

Strange snorts. "Neither of you have any faith in me." He turns to Norrell: "Furthermore, your cap looks silly."

Norrell makes an indignant noise and clutches his little red bed-cap. "Childermass, tell him he is making a mistake."

"He won't listen to me, believe me."

"Mr. Strange, I urge you, I really do, to reconsider."

"You're both a lot of old women," says Strange, and begins scrounging about for spell ingredients.

The last thing he thinks beforethe ensuing burst of magic hurls a shard of wood straight through his chest is: that will show them.

The first thing he hears upon waking up as a ghost is Gilbert Norrell saying "I  _ told  _ you so."

-

2019

"She left it to  _ me _ ?"

"She never hinted?" said the estate agent.

"Well, no." Segundus's brain feels slow and sticky in the wake of the news. "No, nothing like that." An entire country house. In Yorkshire. Fourteen miles outside of York. Where he's going to be working soon. His immediate instincts warn him  _ too good to be true, suspect problems _ . "What's the state of the house like?"

"Ah. Well, I'm afraid it's rather rundown."

Segundus makes an  _ mm  _ of acknowledgement. He'd known there'd be a catch. But a thought is moving through his brain that's making it rather hard to be pessimistic.

"If you sold it you could buy your own flat," says the estate agent.

"Well, it's just," says Segundus, fiddling with his jacket, hardly daring to speak his thoughts, "It's just I'd like to open a school. Eventually. One day. And this would be just the place."

"Oh." The estate agent frowns. "Well of course if you're willing to work on it..."

Segundus has never done any DIY in his life, but he knows how to use Youtube. Anyway, as much as the whole scheme is true, what he's  _ mostly  _ thinking is that he desperately doesn't want to go flat-hunting again, no matter the amount of money he has in hand. He says firmly, "I'm sure I am. Mrs. Lennox would have liked it, I think."

"Did you know her?"

"Distantly. I've never visited Starecross, though; she used to live in Bath."

"Yes, I don't think the house has been lived in for quite some time. Hence the neglect." The man hesitates. "You're quite sure this is what you want to do?"

"I can sell it later, can't I, if it doesn't work?"

"Well. Yes. Of course."

"Well then," says Segundus, with a tentative smile.

-

1795

John Childermass had always known he would die hanged. He did not expect to die hanged in the courtyard of a house he legally owns. He didn't expect to own a house, but those are the breaks for you. Owning a house, and dying hanged anyway.

He isn't conscious when they bring him back to Hurtfew to be buried on his own ground, as a magician always must be (else he'll haunt you). He's barely clinging to life, and it slips away from him as they lay him down on the cold ground, as mud seeps into his jacket.

Thus it is that he sits up in Hurtfew, blinks, and sees Norrell hovering. He looks grey in the cold evening light. He has always, Childermass thinks, been like a ghost. Misplaced among the living and much more suited here now among the dead.

He can still feel the rope around his neck; they hadn't bothered cutting the loop off. He touches it. Rough and twisted, like rope, not like the ghost of it. He's brought it with him, it seems.

"I tried to tell them you didn't kill me," says Norrell. His voice should be hoarse from the indignant shouting that no-one but Childermass could hear. It had seemed to echo from all around him.

"People will believe what they want to," says Childermass. "Nothing to be done about it."

He wonders if the house is, perhaps, a little bit cursed. No-one seems to stay here very long.

-

1780.

Gilbert Norrell is the possessor of three valuable things: a haunted house, a library that is almost larger than the room that contains it (and never big enough), and the paid loyalty of a servant called John Childermass.

Hurtfew has been in his family since it was built in the reign of Anne. His uncle Haythornethwaite left it to him, but did not become a ghost, which Norrell thinks was very inconsiderate of him. At least Uncle Haythornethwaite would have been better company.

The house is of great historical interest as the Raven King was said to have died on the grounds, but Norrell has looked, and called, and asked, and never found any single sign that he is still here. Even now sometimes he waits in still, breathless corridors, begging for any sign. Even now he sometimes speaks sharply to angry rooms. 

No, it's not the Raven King that haunts Norrell's halls. Norrell's ghost is a ragged hawklike man called Vinculus who enjoys declaiming ominous prophecies and comic songs in equal measure. 

Norrell had become a magician to talk to ghosts. A thoroughly pointless endeavor. Vinculus says nothing useful at all; Norrell had once asked him when and where and why he had died, in hopes that this would reveal something about the Raven King's time at the house. Vinculus had replied mysteriously - clearly enjoying his own drama - "I am buried beneath the foundations of the earth!" When Norrell had pointed out that, really, so was everyone else, Vinculus had only begun to recite some sort of prophecy.

This is the most hurtful thing of all. Not only is the Raven King not here, he had not even left anyone useful.

Books and the paid loyalty of one paid servant, and a very empty house. Not quite empty enough.

When Norrell dies in bed of a persistent cough that never went away, he leaves the house to John Childermass, because there is no one else. 

-

1435.

There's tell of a man buried just outside the abbey, away from holy ground. No-one knows what he did or how he died, and  _ he's  _ not telling.

-

2019

Segundus times the commute carefully. Half an hour, plus traffic, so maybe forty-five minutes. Not too bad to say he'll be living rent-free.

This is definitely too good to be true, he thinks, pulling into the long driveway. It really would be perfect for a school: a couple of miles from its neighboring sleepy village, not too far for a determined student to walk but certainly not close enough to be an idle temptation to slack off. It's got wings, actual wings, that could be divided up for housing and teaching; the roof is intact, although how sound it is an inspector would have to know. There are loads of windows, plenty of natural light. He feels his spirits lifting a bit as he drives up.

And dropping, immediately, as he sees a small crowd of people standing in front of the door.

These must be Mrs. Lennox's relatives. Here to tell him he has no right at all to the house, not when he doesn't know her really, not when they barely met once a year, and he rarely visited her, and he's just a  _ schoolteacher _ , and--

He takes a deep breath and stops the car, steps out. "Hello!" he says, force cheerful good will into his voice in an attempt to smooth what he's already sure will be an ugly scene. "Do you...are you friends of the family?"

The people look around at each other and back at the house. They're an oddly miscellaneous lot, and now that Segundus observes, dressed very strangely. A friendly-looking woman in a 1940s nurse's uniform -- a nasty gash on her head, too, why isn't it bandaged?. A tall man with curly hair wearing a creditable attempt at 1820s attire, a dark wound on his stomach. A short grumpy-looking man in an old-fashioned dressing gown and nightcap. A tall dark man with long messy hair, Georgian costume Segundus thinks. A beautiful grey-eyed woman in a long white nightgown and red shawl. At the back, a man in curious tattoos, wearing odd-looking breeches and some kind of long sleeveless coat; his arms and neck are covered with blue tattoos.

This must be a movie set. Well, it's an old house; it makes sense, though their costumes are awfully mixed. Segundus clears his throat and tries again. "I'm Mrs. Lennox's cousin. Sorry, am I interrupting something?"

"A magician," says the short man sourly. "Lovely."

Segundus looks around and feels himself starting to blush. "Oh no, I'm not--I tried as a teenager but I could never make it work--I'm not--"

"You are," says the short man. He sounds impatient, as if Segundus has fallen asleep in class and missed something. "For I am a ghost."

"Um," says Segundus. He takes in again the wound in the curly-haired one's stomach, the gash on the nurse's head. Too late he notices the coil of a noose around the neck of the tall dark man. "Um, I'm so sorry...what?"

"What are you doing in my house?" the short one demands, moving right along.

"Um, Mrs Lennox left it to me."

"Ha! As if it was hers!"

"I bought it legally, you know," says the one with curly hair. "I'd a right to leave it to anyone I like, and Mrs Erquistone to anyone  _ she  _ liked."

The nurse clears her throat and steps forward. "I'm afraid they go on like this," she says, conspiratory. Both the men give her looks of dismay, the curly-haired one's wounded and the short one's petulant. "I'm Arabella -- Arabella Strange."

This seems to snap the ghosts into some kind of routine.

"Emma Wintertowne." The beautiful woman in the nightgown.

"John Childermass." The man with the noose.

"Jonathan Strange." The Regency one, which is curious. Arabella's body language around him and his around her say husband and wife, but their outfits are more than a hundred years apart, to Segundus's inexperienced eye.

"Gilbert Norrell." The short one. " _ Original _ owner of Hurtfew."

"Ashfair," says Jonathan Strange.

"I thought it was called Starecross," says Segundus.

Strange and Norrell both burst out into entirely contradictory rants. Arabella waves a hand at them. 

The man at the back, the one with the tattoos, waits for silence to fall before he introduces himself. He steps forward and bows dramatically, sweeping off a tattered four-cornered hat. "Vinculus, the magician of Threadneedle-street."

"Not anymore," says Gilbert Norrell.

"What is done may never be undone," says Vinculus mysteriously, and straightens himself up. "At your service."

"Much good may it do you," adds Strange.

"So there are six of you," says Segundus. He can feel a headache pounding needles into the back of his head. 

The ghosts all say "Yes", except Vinculus, who says "Seven." Everyone swivels to look at him.

"Did I say seven?" he says, looking innocent. "Six. Yes, of course."

"All these years you've been hiding something," begins Gilbert Norrell.

"Mr Norrell, please," says Arabella. "We must finish showing our guest the house. And your name, sir?"

"John Segundus," says Segundus, helplessly. "It's very nice to meet you."


End file.
